This is an index of some of my various
presentations, essays and ideas from over the past 20 years.

I first became aware of the human
predicament about 1986, and began reading about the many paradox of our
times.The first of these: why is it
that human civilization is on such a titanic trajectory when some/many individual
humans can be so brilliant.Even some
group efforts can achieve outstanding results.

After a couple of years of reading and
communicating with some of the writers, and other aware individuals, I concluded
that “infinite growth’, the apparent primary goal of all levels of current government,
is a suicidal mission. Our planet and
the Gaian system of nature have limits.

I started a manuscript on these issues,
completed in 1992 (details in the lead-in to the Recovery Chapter,
noted in the list below).

This index page gives a brief description
of various writings along with a web link. My papers are scattered around the
internet in a rather untidy fashion, which I plan to clean up some day.Sorry, but some are still in draft form.

Listings:

My home page gives some
personal info on career and family background and also some links to old
papers published in various journals such as CACOR (Canadian Association for
the Club Of Rome), or Futures, of
UK.

Safewater group web is produced locally and updated
daily as a news bulletin board pulse some articles relevant to global
issues.In the Big Picture section,
are 13 of my essays.

Chapter
10, Recovery: of the manuscript, A
Trouble-shooters Analysis of the Human Predicament, this chapter provides
a backcast sketching the recovery era: how
civilization escaped from the cascading consequences of the growth paradigm
that was energized by Pandora’s fossil fuels. Envisioned is the holistic
social structures of a sustainable civilization. Since writing this chapter
two decades ago, not much has changed in my thoughts in this matter in that
“localization” must be one of the key features.However, like many other writers who
speculate in a Plan “B” type future; I ignored the monetary system, and means
of exchange.

Since
then I have learned a great deal about the nature of money and recognize that
the money-system and its control, has an even greater influence over
individual behaviour and local or global politics than any other human
factor, including religion. A dynamic sustainable civilization
simply can never emerge until the global
monetocracy, as called by some, is supplanted/abandoned.Our primary means of exchange of goods and
services must be tied directly to “real wealth” (what humans both need and
desire), and become an integral part of the socio-political structure to
enable dynamic feedback in order to control the flow of, “human activity,
especially in such vital areas as population levels and resource
exploitation.With this in mind, I
wrote the next paper as a summary of other notes:

...
human activity growth and the drivers of growth including the money system;

...
human nature;

...
a synopsis of the interplay of these;

...
three possible outcomes

Then
it moves to, Technical Specifications
and Available Resources, which then covers the background material for PCDynamics (Per Capita Dynamics), touching
on:

... monetary systems and bioregionalism;

... commodity based money systems;

... and then the components of PCDynamics
explaining how Optimum Population is a key regional societal goal, and
internationally approved guidelines are used to generate statistical data
that provides dynamic feedback to limit or accelerate (some day) human
population and economic activity by limiting the money supply.

In
October 08, I made a presentation
of PCDynamics to an economic reform conference, the Bromsgrove Group of
UK. But the paper did not go over well with this audience.While they promote significant monetary
reform, they believe that tweaking here and there with the existing system,
things might work out. Population issues are still a taboo subject.However, it led to lively conversation!

Step 1: 5000 years ago: Displacement of feminine
balance: The beginning of androcentrism;

Step 2: Making humans external to nature;

Step 3: Removing spirituality from nature;

More Recently – Dominator Societies;

Rapid Growth Enablers – energy and imaginary money;

Dominator Schools of Thought and the rise of Neoconservativism;

Pronatialist Religions & Cultures;

Emergency
Paradigm Shift: The separation of Siamese twins where only one can
survive, is given as a metaphorical picture of the social change process
needed to enable a viable civilization. A civilization where we, … redesign our institutions and operate them
quite differently… as noted in the quote below.

Of the many notable quotes by wise people
that I’ve come across is a paragraph by systems thinker Stafford Beer, from
his book Designing Freedom, written
while he was in Chile directing a revolutionary cybernetic system of
government oversight of social/economic development.It was just before the US coup that
overthrew/assassinated the socialist president,
Salvador Allende.

Quote from Stafford Beer in, Designing Freedom

I am proposing simply that society should
use its tools to redesign its institutions, and to operate those institutions
quite differently. You can imagine all the problems. But the first and gravest
problem is in the mind, screwed down by all those cultural constraints. You
will not need a lot of learning to understand what I am saying: what you will
need is intellectual freedom. It is a free gift for all who have the courage
to accept it. Remember: our culture teaches us not intellectual courage, but
intellectual conformity.

About
1995 I spent a pleasant evening chatting with Stafford at his home in
Toronto, and carried on discussions by fax and phone for some time after that.
He died of a heart attack a year or so later.

The likelihood of such PCDynamics type change happening?

We can only speculate on our fluid future.

It is most unlikely that significant change toward
PCDynamics future could occur prior to significant collapse of the current
corporate governance and where fiat money considered as wealth.A key factor is, which will collapse first?
the Gaian life support systems or the fossil energy
supported economic system? or will they both continue the dismal decline of
the last couple years?

On the positive side:

The PCDynamics society is base on
bioregionalism.As economics and
environmental changes worsen, people naturally tend to adapt a circle the wagons response and to
focus on localization of trade and support.Primitive forms of regional currencies are growing. This natural human
tendency could set the stage for inter regional cooperation of groups of
areas interested in localization, because no region can survive alone.The Transition Town’s movement (TT) is
doing this now with hundreds of communities now involved, and growing
rapidly. The hierarchy of such an organization could begin to adopt standards
that may lead toward a PCDynamics style society.Climate change and Peak Oil are the prime
motivating factors of TT.

Another positive note is that countries and states sometimes
now use trade barriers to protect their self-interest, defying globalization
and encouraging autonomy. This trend may diffuse the old fashioned gun boat
diplomacy and war.

If enough positive changes are occurring, even if
not interlinked now, they may coalesce at some point and tip the balance of
the coming fractal future, toward a softer emergency landing than the results
of unrestrained chaos and die-off.